Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 3.djvu/157

 said nothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without pretending to smile. "I am told you are unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it. That would be something for me. But you yourself say you are happy, and you are somehow so still, so smooth. You are completely changed. You conceal everything; I haven't really come near you."

"You come very near," Isabel said, gently, but in a tone of warning.

"And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done well?"

"You ask a great deal."

"Yes—I have always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell me. I shall never know, if you can help it. And then it's none of my business." He had spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a considerate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that it was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she would think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a lash and added a deep vibration to his low voice. "You are perfectly inscrutable, and that's what makes me think you have something to hide. I say that I don't care a straw for your cousin, but I don't mean that I don't like him. I mean that it isn't because I like him that I go away with him. I would go if he were an idiot, and you should have asked me. If you should ask me, I would go to Siberia to-morrow. Why do you want me to leave the place? You must have some reason for that; if you were as contented as you pretend you are, you wouldn't care. I would rather know the truth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come here for nothing. That isn't what I came for. I thought I shouldn't care. I came because I wanted to assure myself that I needn't think of you any more. I haven't thought